Twitter is dying Natasha Lomas @riptari / 6:20 AM MDT•March 28, 2023 It’s five months since Elon Musk overpaid for a relatively small microblogging platform called Twitter. The platform had punched above its weight in pure user numbers thanks to an unrivaled ability to both distribute real-time information and make expertise available. Combine these elements with your own critical faculty — to weed out the usual spam and bs — and it could feel like the only place online that really mattered. Even if the average internet user remained baffled by Twitter, it contained essential ingredients that made it a go-to source for journalists or other curious types wanting to earwig on conversations between interesting people — whether subject experts or celebrities. It was also therefore a place where experts and celebrities could find community and an engaged audience — without the need for layers of message-filtering middlemen. Twitter was where these two sides met and (sometimes) meshed in messy conversation. There was an alluring (sometimes bruising) rawness to the medium. Yes, you could get the thrill of almost unvarnished opinions from celebrities on Twitter — at least compared to more curated social media feeds like Instagram. But the real pull and power of the platform came from the incredible wealth of knowledge any Twitter user could directly tap into — across all sorts of professional fields, from deep tech to deep space and far beyond — just by listening in on a discussion thread or sliding a question into someone’s DMs. Above all Twitter was an information network; the social element came a distant second. Although it had a notable sideline as an unofficial dating app as it could be a great way to get a feel for someone’s personality without meeting them in person. (There are countless stories of people making friends or even life partners via encounters on Twitter.) The running joke became ‘how is this site free?!’ Because the interactions could be so remarkable — so show-stopping or fascinating — that it felt incredible to encounter this kind of proximity (to knowledge or stardust) for free. Well, Twitter is no longer free. Literally and figuratively. And we are all so much poorer for that. Since Musk took over he has set about dismantling everything that made Twitter valuable — making it his mission to drive out expertise, scare away celebrities, bully reporters and — on the flip side — reward the bad actors, spammers and sycophants who thrive in the opposite environment: An information vacuum. It almost doesn’t matter if this is deliberate sabotage by Musk or the blundering stupidity of a clueless idiot. The upshot is the same: Twitter is dying. The value that Twitter’s platform produced, by combining valuable streams of qualification and curiosity, is being beaten and wrung out. What’s left has — for months now — felt like an echo-y shell of its former self. And it’s clear that with every freshly destructive decision — whether it’s unbanning the nazis and letting the toxicity rip, turning verification into a pay-to-play megaphone or literally banning journalists — Musk has applied his vast wealth to destroying as much of the information network’s value as possible in as short a time as possible; each decision triggering another exodus of expertise as more long-time users give up and depart. Simply put, Musk is flushing Twitter down the sink. I guess now we all know what the dumb meme really meant. On April Fools Day, the next — perhaps final — stage of the destruction will commence as Musk rips away the last layer of legacy verification, turning up the volume on anyone who’s willing to pay him $7.99 per month to shout over everyone else. Anyone who was verified under the old (and by no means perfect) system of Twitter verification — which was at least related to who they were (celebrity, expert, journalist, etc.) — will cease to be verified. Assuming they haven’t already deleted their account. Only accounts that pay Musk will display a ‘Blue Check’. This is just a parody of verification since the blue tick no longer signals any kind of quality. But the visual similarity seems intentional; a dark pattern designed to generate maximum confusion. If you pay Musk for this meaningless mark you’ll also get increased algorithmic visibility of your tweets and the power to drown out non-paying users. Which mean all the fakes and imposters can (and will) overwrite the real-deal on Twitter. Genuine users are rightly outraged at the idea of being blackmailed into paying Musk to prove who they are. These people — the signal amid the Twitter noise — are, after all, a core component of the value of the network. So of course they shouldn’t (and won’t) pay — and so their visibility on Twitter will decay. Which, in turn, will trigger more damage — as any remaining users wanting to find quality information will find it increasingly hard to come by… It’s death by irrelevance. well this is going to be fun… pic.twitter.com/sMab5OvAXa — Monica Lewinsky (she/her) (@MonicaLewinsky) March 26, 2023 In a further twist, only paying users will get a vote in future Twitter policy polls — meaning Musk will guarantee populist decision-making is rigged in his fanboys’ favor. (But actually this just looks like pure trolling since he doesn’t stick to the outcome of poll results he doesn’t like anyway.) The upshot is Musk is turning Twitter into the opposite of a meritocracy. He’s channeling pure chaos — just like the cartoon ‘chaotic evil’ villains love to. (And, well, as we’ve said before, Twitter is Musk’s calamity masterpiece.) Nor does this gambit look like a moneyspinner for Musk, either. He’s clawed in just $11 million in subscription revenue since relaunching Twitter Blue three months ago, per Sensor Tower. (Reminder: Musk paid $44 billion for Twitter last October. And has already destroyed half that value, according to a recent leaked internal memo.) So, yeah, this ‘game of pwns’ has been verrrrrrrrrry expensive for Musk too. It’s an eye-watering lose-lose equation — unless you’re a spammer, basically. (Then, presumably, it’s a cheap way to spam Musk fanboys if that’s a useful thing to do?) Making money out of Twitter doesn’t seem to be the point for the billionaire/former world’s richest man who obviously has wealth enough to throw plenty of borrowed billions down the sink. Although early in his takeover he trailed (trolled?) the idea of transforming Twitter into a billion user platform. But when it comes to growing revenue and users we must all surely agree that Musk been drastically — spectacularly — unsuccessful. However if the point is simply pure destruction — building a chaos machine by removing a source of valuable information from our connected world, where groups of all stripes could communicate and organize, and replacing that with a place of parody that rewards insincerity, time-wasting and the worst forms of communication in order to degrade the better half — then he’s done a remarkable job in very short order. Truly it’s an amazing act of demolition. But, well, $44 billion can buy you a lot of wrecking balls. That our system allows wealth to be turned into a weapon to nuke things of broad societal value is one hard lesson we should take away from the wreckage of downed turquoise feathers. You can say shame on the Twitter board that let it happen. And we probably should. But, technically speaking, their job was to maximize shareholder value; which means to hell with the rest of us. We should also consider how the ‘rules based order’ we’ve devised seems unable to stand up to a bully intent on replacing free access to information with paid disinformation — and how our democratic systems seem so incapable and frozen in the face of confident vandals running around spray-painting ‘freedom’ all over the walls as they burn the library down. The simple truth is that building something valuable — whether that’s knowledge, experience or a network worth participating in — is really, really hard. But tearing it all down is piss easy. Let that sink in. https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/28/twitter-is-dying/
Great job, Elon. You are just a couple quarters away from defaulting on the debt. But you never did believe in paying your bills. Twitter Ad Revenue Plunges 89% Since Musk Takeover as Major Brands Stay Away (Report) https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/twitter-ad-revenue-plunges-89-161806252.html Twitter advertising dollars have plunged 89% since billionaire Elon Musk bought the social media platform in October, Bloomberg reported, and as a result, revenue has dropped by half. Twitter has seen a slight uptick in daily users since early 2022, the report said, but advertisers have not returned to the site amid the ongoing upheaval at the company. Since Musk took over Twitter in October, he’s slashed jobs by about 75%, leaving the company with less than 2,000 employees, and most of the content management team gone. Last week, Musk valued the company at just $20 billion, less than half of what he paid for it. Citing data from Pathmatics, Bloomberg said that from September to October of last year, the top 10 advertisers on Twitter spent $71 million on ads. In the past two months, the total was just $7.6 million, a decline of 89%, the research firm said. Twitter’s top ad customers used to include marquee names like Ford, American Express, HBO, Amazon, IBM and Coca-Cola. But amid the early turmoil surrounding Musk’s takeover, major brands fled the site in droves, with 50 out of the top 100 advertisers pulling their ads. But while reports in January said that the number of brands spending on the service rose in the months after Musk’s takeover, Bloomberg said major media agencies like IPG and Horizon Media that advised clients to pause their Twitter campaigns last fall have not yet reversed course. “One media buyer said their firm’s initial recommendation to clients after Musk took over was a ‘red light,’ as in, stop spending,” the report said. “They’re still advising clients proceed with caution — the light has changed to ‘amber’ — as the company still appears to be in a chaotic state.” The latest saga at the platform surrounds the “blue checks” that are used to verify account holders. Musk instituted the monthly subscription service, Twitter Blue, in November, which granted the marks to anyone who paid $8 — now $7 — a month, only to see the site flooded with fake accounts. Then last week he announced that “legacy” blue checks — those granted to celebrities, journalists and news organizations, politicians and companies before Musk’s takeover — will be stripped from their accounts on April 1 if they don’t begin paying the fee. On Tuesday, Musk went a step further and said that the algorithmic “For You” feed his team created in recent months will soon feature only paid, verified accounts rather than showing users a wider array of posts. Musk has made attempts to stem the outflow of advertisers, including creating a product that enables companies to block their ads from appearing alongside tweets that contain certain keywords or images, Bloomberg said. The company also offered deep discounts to major advertisers that came back — “in some cases hundreds of thousands of dollars in free ads,” the report said. “Twitter is no longer broadcasting those deals, but several advertisers said they know they could get them if they did want to return.” But advertisers are wary in part because of Musk’s own behavior on the site, the report said. Musk has in recent weeks engaged in a public spat with a disabled employee, defended “Dilbert” cartoonist Scott Adams after a racist rant caught on video; posted a sexist joke on his feed and on Monday amplified an anti-trans post related to the Nashville school shooting. Bloomberg said advertisers are concerned about Musk’s “erratic decision making and how his personal brand blurs with Twitter’s corporate image.” It pointed to Musk’s efforts to adjust the platform’s algorithm to boost his own tweets as one eyebrow-raising move. “It’s this intangible wild card,” the media buyer told Bloomberg. “We need to work with clients to understand from a values perspective: ‘Is this a partner you want to be in business with?’”
Can anyone explain how Musk's Twitter 2.0 is going to make money. You know, to pay back his debts before it goes under. 89% of his revenue from major advertisers has left... and all of his ideas are laughable and/or unimplementable. Twitter is reportedly waiving the $1,000 monthly verification fee for its 10,000 most-followed organizations, amid backlash that the new cost is 'outlandish' https://finance.yahoo.com/news/twitter-reportedly-waiving-1-000-165902479.html
LOL. Murdoch vs. Musk? New York Post locked out of Twitter. Deja vu: Twitter locks out The Post over story on removal of 5K tweets https://nypost.com/2023/03/30/twitter-locks-out-the-post-over-story-on-5k-scrubbed-tweets/ It was great while it lasted. Twitter once again locked out The Post on Thursday in a stunning replay of the epic blunder the social media giant admittedly made over the revelation of Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop. The company’s Kafkaesque move came after The Post tweeted out a story about Twitter’s deletion of more than 5,000 tweets about a planned “Trans Day of Vengeance” protest in front of the US Supreme Court on Saturday. It prevented The Post from posting any tweets to its main account, which has 2.8 million followers. The suppression of The Post came even as multiple other news outlets have reported on Twitter’s decision to scrub tweets and retweets that featured an image promoting Saturday’s event. It also appeared to fly in the face of Twitter owner Elon Musk’s description of himself as a “free speech absolutist” who’s opposed to censorship on his website. In an ironic twist, Musk last year called Twitter’s prior crackdown on The Post “incredibly inappropriate.” The first installment of the Musk-authorized “Twitter Files” about past suppression of free speech on the platform also involved the outrageous incident. The Post appealed its latest lockout by Twitter, which didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Instead, The Post got a reply with nothing but a smiling poop emoji, which Musk said in a March 19 tweet would be the company’s automatic response to inquiries from reporters. The Post’s account was restored after 8 p.m. Thursday. In October 2020, Twitter blocked The Post from its main account over the bombshell revelation of emails from the soon-to-be first son’s laptop. The lockout came when The Post refused Twitter’s demand to delete six tweets that linked to stories the company claimed were based on hacked information, without any basis in fact. After a two-week standoff that saw The Post gain about 190,000 followers as outrage against Twitter mounted, the company caved and unlocked the account, saying it was revising its “Hacked Materials Policy” and “updating our practice of not retroactively overturning prior enforcement.” Twitter founder and then-CEO Jack Dorsey later told a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that locking out The Post was “a mistake that we made, both in terms of the intention of the policy and also the enforcement action of not allowing people to share it publicly or privately.” On Wednesday, Twitter’s head of trust and safety, Ella Irwin, said the “Trans Day of Vengeance” images were automatically compiled and deleted removed because “We do not support tweets that incite violence irrespective of who posts them.” “‘Vengeance’ does not imply peaceful protest. Organizing or support for peaceful protests is ok,” Irwin added. Twitter acted after two days after 28-year-Audrey Hale, who police said identified as transgender, gunned down six people — including three 9-year-old students — at The Covenant School in Nashville before being killed by cops. The Trans Radical Activist Network, which is behind Saturday’s event, said the protest was planned before Monday’s mass shooting and wasn’t a call to violence. “Vengeance means fighting back with vehemence,” the group said on its website. “We are fighting against false narratives, criminalization, and eradication of our existence.”